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      <h1 class="title">The Monospace Web</h1>
      <span class="subtitle">A minimalist design exploration</span>
    </td>
    <th>Version</th>
    <td class="width-min">v0.1.5</td>
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    <th>Updated</th>
    <td class="width-min"><time style="white-space: pre;">2025-08-20</time></td>
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    <th class="width-min">Author</th>
    <td class="width-auto"><a href="https://wickstrom.tech"><cite>Oskar
Wickström</cite></a></td>
    <th class="width-min">License</th>
    <td>MIT</td>
  </tr>
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<label class="debug-toggle-label"><input type="checkbox" class="debug-toggle" /> Debug mode</label>
<nav id="TOC" role="doc-toc">
<h2 id="toc-title">Contents</h2>
<ul class="incremental">
<li><a href="#introduction" id="toc-introduction">Introduction</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-basics" id="toc-the-basics">The Basics</a></li>
<li><a href="#lists" id="toc-lists">Lists</a></li>
<li><a href="#tables" id="toc-tables">Tables</a></li>
<li><a href="#forms" id="toc-forms">Forms</a></li>
<li><a href="#grids" id="toc-grids">Grids</a></li>
<li><a href="#ascii-drawings" id="toc-ascii-drawings">ASCII
Drawings</a></li>
<li><a href="#media" id="toc-media">Media</a></li>
<li><a href="#discussion" id="toc-discussion">Discussion</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<h2 id="introduction">Introduction</h2>
<p>Monospace fonts are dear to many of us. Some find them more readable,
consistent, and beautiful, than their proportional alternatives. Maybe
we’re just brainwashed from spending years in terminals? Or are we
hopelessly nostalgic? I’m not sure. But I like them, and that’s why I
started experimenting with all-monospace Web.</p>
<p>On this page, I use a monospace grid to align text and draw diagrams.
It’s generated from a simple Markdown document (using Pandoc), and the
CSS and a tiny bit of Javascript renders it on the grid. The page is
responsive, shrinking in character-sized steps. Standard elements should
<em>just work</em>, at least that’s the goal. It’s semantic HTML,
rendered as if we were back in the 70s.</p>
<p>All right, but is this even a good idea? It’s a technical and
creative challenge and I like the aesthetic. If you’d like to use it,
feel free to fork or copy the bits you need, respecting the license. I
might update it over time with improvements and support for more
standard elements.</p>
<h2 id="the-basics">The Basics</h2>
<p>This document uses a few extra classes here and there, but mostly
it’s just markup. This, for instance, is a regular paragraph.</p>
<p>Look at this horizontal break:</p>
<hr>
<p>Lovely. We can hide stuff in the <code>&lt;details</code>&gt;
element:</p>
<details>
<summary>
A short summary of the contents
</summary>
<p>
Hidden gems.
</p>
</details>
<h2 id="lists">Lists</h2>
<p>This is a plain old bulleted list:</p>
<ul class="incremental">
<li>Banana</li>
<li>Paper boat</li>
<li>Cucumber</li>
<li>Rocket</li>
</ul>
<p>Ordered lists look pretty much as you’d expect:</p>
<ol class="incremental" type="1">
<li>Goals</li>
<li>Motivations
<ol class="incremental" type="1">
<li>Intrinsic</li>
<li>Extrinsic</li>
</ol></li>
<li>Second-order effects</li>
</ol>
<p>It’s nice to visualize trees. This is a regular unordered list with a
<code>tree</code> class:</p>
<ul class="tree">
<li>
<p style="margin: 0;">
<strong>/dev/nvme0n1p2</strong>
</p>
<ul class="incremental">
<li>usr
<ul class="incremental">
<li>local<br />
</li>
<li>share<br />
</li>
<li>libexec<br />
</li>
<li>include<br />
</li>
<li>sbin<br />
</li>
<li>src<br />
</li>
<li>lib64<br />
</li>
<li>lib<br />
</li>
<li>bin<br />
</li>
<li>games
<ul class="incremental">
<li>solitaire</li>
<li>snake</li>
<li>tic-tac-toe</li>
</ul></li>
<li>media<br />
</li>
</ul></li>
<li>media<br />
</li>
<li>run<br />
</li>
<li>tmp</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="tables">Tables</h2>
<p>We can use regular tables that automatically adjust to the monospace
grid. They’re responsive.</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th class="width-min">
Name
</th>
<th class="width-auto">
Dimensions
</th>
<th class="width-min">
Position
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
Boboli Obelisk
</td>
<td>
1.41m × 1.41m × 4.87m
</td>
<td>
43°45’50.78”N 11°15’3.34”E
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
Pyramid of Khafre
</td>
<td>
215.25m × 215.25m × 136.4m
</td>
<td>
29°58’34”N 31°07’51”E
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Note that only one column is allowed to grow.</p>
<h2 id="forms">Forms</h2>
<p>Here are some buttons:</p>
<nav>
<button>
Reset
</button>
<button>
Save
</button>
</nav>
<p>And inputs:</p>
<form class="grid">
<label>First name
<input type="text" placeholder="Placeholder..." /></label> <label>Last
name <input type="text" placeholder="Text goes here..." /></label>
<label>Age <input type="text" value="30" /></label>
</form>
<p>And radio buttons:</p>
<form class="grid">
<label><input name="radio" type="radio" /> Option #1</label>
<label><input name="radio" type="radio" /> Option #2</label>
<label><input name="radio" type="radio" /> Option #3</label>
</form>
<h2 id="grids">Grids</h2>
<p>Add the <code>grid</code> class to a container to divide up the
horizontal space evenly for the cells. Note that it maintains the
monospace, so the total width might not be 100%. Here are six grids with
increasing cell count:</p>
<div class="grid">
<input readonly value="1" />
</div>
<div class="grid">
<input readonly value="1" /><input readonly value="2" />
</div>
<div class="grid">
<input readonly value="1" /><input readonly value="2" /><input readonly value="3" />
</div>
<div class="grid">
<input readonly value="1" /><input readonly value="2" /><input readonly value="3" /><input readonly value="4" />
</div>
<div class="grid">
<input readonly value="1" /><input readonly value="2" /><input readonly value="3" /><input readonly value="4" /><input readonly value="5" />
</div>
<div class="grid">
<input readonly value="1" /><input readonly value="2" /><input readonly value="3" /><input readonly value="4" /><input readonly value="5" /><input readonly value="6" />
</div>
<p>If we want one cell to fill the remainder, we set
<code>flex-grow: 1;</code> for that particular cell.</p>
<div class="grid">
<input readonly value="1" /><input readonly value="2" /><input readonly value="3!" style="flex-grow: 1;" /><input readonly value="4" /><input readonly value="5" /><input readonly value="6" />
</div>
<h2 id="ascii-drawings">ASCII Drawings</h2>
<p>We can draw in <code>&lt;pre&gt;</code> tags using <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-drawing_characters">box-drawing
characters</a>:</p>
<pre><code>╭─────────────────╮
│ MONOSPACE ROCKS │
╰─────────────────╯</code></pre>
<p>To have it stand out a bit more, we can wrap it in a
<code>&lt;figure&gt;</code> tag, and why not also add a
<code>&lt;figcaption&gt;</code>.</p>
<figure>
<pre>
┌───────┐ ┌───────┐ ┌───────┐
│Actor 1│ │Actor 2│ │Actor 3│
└───┬───┘ └───┬───┘ └───┬───┘
    │         │         │    
    │         │  msg 1  │    
    │         │────────►│    
    │         │         │    
    │  msg 2  │         │    
    │────────►│         │    
┌───┴───┐ ┌───┴───┐ ┌───┴───┐
│Actor 1│ │Actor 2│ │Actor 3│
└───────┘ └───────┘ └───────┘</pre>
<figcaption>
Example: Message passing.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Let’s go wild and draw a chart!</p>
<figure>
<pre>
                      Things I Have
                                              
    │                                     ████ Usable
15  │
    │                                     ░░░░ Broken
    │
12  │             ░            
    │             ░            
    │   ░         ░              
 9  │   ░         ░              
    │   ░         ░              
    │   ░         ░                    ░
 6  │   █         ░         ░          ░
    │   █         ░         ░          ░
    │   █         ░         █          ░
 3  │   █         █         █          ░
    │   █         █         █          ░
    │   █         █         █          ░
 0  └───▀─────────▀─────────▀──────────▀─────────────
      Socks     Jeans     Shirts   USB Drives
</pre>
</figure>
<h2 id="media">Media</h2>
<p>Media objects are supported, like images and video:</p>
<figure>
<img src="demo/castle.jpg"
alt="A room in an old French castle (2024)" />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">A room in an old French castle
(2024)</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<video
src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/The_Center_of_the_Web_%281914%29.webm"
controls=""><a
href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/The_Center_of_the_Web_%281914%29.webm">The
Center of the Web (1914), Wikimedia</a></video>
<figcaption aria-hidden="true"><a
href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Center_of_the_Web_(1914).webm/11">The
Center of the Web (1914), Wikimedia</a></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They extend to the width of the page, and add appropriate padding in
the bottom to maintain the monospace grid.</p>
<h2 id="discussion">Discussion</h2>
<p>That’s it for now. I’ve very much enjoyed making this, pushing my CSS
chops and having a lot of fun with the design. If you like it or even
decide to use it, please <a href="https://x.com/owickstrom">let me
know</a>.</p>
<p>The full source code is here: <a
href="https://github.com/owickstrom/the-monospace-web">github.com/owickstrom/the-monospace-web</a></p>
<p>Finally, a massive shout-out to <a
href="https://x.com/usgraphics">U.S. Graphics Company</a> for all the
inspiration.</p>
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